Checking Bias in Empathy Maps
Empathy maps are useful tools to help design researchers, educators, and students to better understand their audience. While these maps can provide many insights about the wants and needs of various stakeholders in the design process, how can individual beliefs, perceptions, and ethics held by the designer influence these ubiquitous artifacts of design? In this one-hour workshop, participants will focus on this question through play and collaboration by utilizing a game that builds on the empathy map structure to address and challenge implicit and explicit biases that may be held by a designer. The object of this game is to better understand the thoughts, feelings, actions, and sayings (attributes) of a hyper-polarized audience—college-aged Republicans and Democrats. To do this, players will be asked to work together in groups to match these attributes to four user personas representing different ideological values on the political spectrum. These personas include both strong and cross-pressured partisan members of the Democratic and Republican parties. After the attributes have been matched by the players, the actual attributes assigned to the personas will be shared. Players will be then asked to tally the number of correct matches, participate in a guided discussion around rational compassion, and debrief about the challenges that implicit and explicit bias presented in playing the game.
Setup
This workshop works best with round tables with 5-10 people at each table. Teams will work together using paper manipulatives provided by the workshop organizer.
Workshop Schedule
0:00-0:05-Icebreaker and Introductions
0:05-0:08-Gameplay Instructions
0:08-0:38-Gameplay
0:38-0:55-Debrief & Discussion
0:55-1:00-Follow Up Questions